You are a fashion photography duo. Can you tell us about how you started and how you formed your collaboration together? I imagine it has advantages as well as challenges! How do you best work together as a duo?

Marcos & Kelvin: “When we met in 2016 we both had our individual work. We were a couple before working together, but at the beginning of our relationship it became pretty common to one assist the other. And after that, the process of joining our visions was almost like a natural choice. We decided to use one camera only, so we can really put all of the attention on the image we’re trying to create. But our creative process begins long before the moment of the click itself, and because there are two of us, it always ends up being collective. We often have really different points of view, so we’re always trying to get to a place that we both feel good about it. In this process, we need to be opened to questionings and to opposing ideas so that what we are creating is also different and unique, in a way.”

We want to dive into your works a bit. Your works are colourful and mesmerising and there’s always a surreal or playful element that can be found in your photography. Can you tell us what story you ultimately strive to tell in your works? And if there’s an all-encompassing theme to your works, what would it be? 

Marcos & Kelvin: “We’re living in the era of the instantaneous — people spend a lot of time scrolling through images on their phones, reading all of them in a matter of seconds. And we know that’s probably gonna happen with our images too, but that doesn’t keep us from constantly trying to make every image that we make to have some kind of purpose, message, or some element that communicates something. We come from really culturally rich places of Brasil, Piauí and Bahia, so I think that most of the inspiration and ideas come from these backgrounds, and childhood memories.”

In your works, there are subthemes of colonialism, racial and gender inclusion, representation and more; all strong and political themes that drive the narrative. Can you walk us through the different themes you’ve explored over the years? What have these themes meant to you personally? And what themes continue to be present in your current works? And are there future themes you still wish to explore?

Marcos & Kelvin: “Those themes can also be interpreted as personal needs and societal needs. Things that we really need to see more, that we think could be more talked about and somehow it’s not. We often use fashion as a way of talking about important topics beyond that. We are also really interested in telling stories from a different perspective, especially from a decolonial perspective. Coming from a place where, statistically, it’s hard to get or almost impossible to get anywhere, we think it’s really important to act as a representation, and as a voice for those people who don’t see themselves in these different places in the world, and to include them and let them know that statistics can and should never stop us. So personally, we think we would talk about those themes forever because they are a reality for us.”

Growing up in Brazil, how do you think it has influenced your work? How do you think it compares to photography from the rest of the world? Who or what have been the inspirations in your work? 

Marcos & Kelvin: “It has influenced us tremendously. Brasil is a huge country, filled with culture and warmth, colours, music and dance, so it’s really easy to be inspired by it, especially growing up in the regions that we grew up in.

Each state in Brasil has its own cultural characteristics and we were born in the northeast part of the country where most of the richest cultural movements were originated.”

Marcos: “As for inspirations — being born and raised in a small little village in a really remote part of the country, a state called Piauí, I was surrounded by nature and raw forms of art, I learned to work with the things I had and didn’t have, and this really shaped my whole vision and my way of working. The special memories I have growing up there still inspire me every day. The fact that I didn’t have access to the Internet until I was 18, (I’m 27 right now) also, in a way, made me more focused on experimenting with different kinds of mediums.”

Kelvin: “For me, beyond all of my childhood memories and the things that bring me back to those days, growing up on the coast of Bahia, I think that my political idea of the world was mostly formed during my college years. Studying journalism made me see things from a different perspective and realize that photography has endless possibilities and stories to tell. What really matters is what you’re trying to say with it. And it was also a moment to develop my questioning nature. And that really reflects in our work, since the beginning and with every work we create.”

Marcos & Kelvin: “Also, I think we are really inspired by the colors of Walter Firmo, by the works of Nair Benedicto and by the grace of the portraits of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé. Apart from that, we really take inspiration from different forms of art, such as painting and sculpture. We often say that photography is just a medium for what we want to create.”

We want to dive into your creative process. How do you start your work? Do you always know what you want to create? Do you sketch out the concept? And what is the balance in both your visions and work approaches? 

Marcos & Kelvin: “To be honest, there’s not an actual formula for our creative process. Inspiration comes from everything and everywhere — you have to constantly feed your brain so that can generate great ideas. We often come up with a concept and start diving really deep into the concept creatively, by sometimes bringing props from our house or painting backgrounds in our own backyard. We kind of like to have a really good draft of what we’re gonna do, so we do sketch the images together beforehand. But on set everything can change and that’s the beauty of it. We actually tried both ways. There was this editorial for Vogue for which we wanted to talk about birds after listening to a vinyl that I brought from a thrift store called “Cantos de Aves do Brasil”, which loosely translates to something like “Brazilian Birds Singing”. And the mood-board was just a bunch of images of birds.. we didn’t sketch anything and it was another way of sharing inspiration, for us and the team, and also experiencing studio photography in a most detached way from the actual sketch, because you have to really work with what you have. It’s also a great creative exercise in the end!”

Looking back at your past works, how would you say you’ve evolved as an artist? Were there periods when you saw or did things differently? And what are the biggest lessons you’ve learned? And what do you feel has been your biggest achievement?

Marcos & Kelvin: “I look with a lot of respect to the different times we’ve been through and places we’ve been — it has been a long journey until here, to be able to imprint our visions on things. When I think about photography, especially talking about portrait and fashion photography, you deal with lots of people, lots of personalities and you learn something new every single time. If not how to deal with them, you learn something about your lighting, about the backgrounds you prefer and other technical things. I see my actual work as a constant refinement of the past ones. And looking back at it, I can only be really respectful of what we were doing back then nand there, especially because most of the time, we didn’t have the proper ways to do it, and yet we did it.

As for our biggest achievement — I’d say it is to inspire people from all over the world and to be able to have creative freedom, to express ourselves freely and be called to put our visions onto things. That’s a huge achievement and the bigger one an artist can ask for.”

Finally, if there’s one thing you could change about today’s world, what would it be? How do you think we get there? And how do you hope to contribute to it?

Marcos & Kelvin: ”I think that our work is about rewriting narratives and creating new stories.. and to try to make people see themselves in them somehow — at least, that’s what we aim for! It’s a constant process of trying to deliver something that touches people and that can access deeper emotions. As artists, we have the duty to reflect on the world and the times we live in. To build a vision of a world based on our experiences and worldviews is the greatest legacy we can leave to those who will come, and especially to those who will come from the places we came from.”

“To build a vision of a world based on our experiences and worldviews is the greatest legacy we can leave to those who will come, and especially to those who will come from the places we came from.”

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